Apple has released a new Android app called Tracker Detect, designed to help people who don't own iPhones or iPads to identify unexpected AirTags and other Find My network-equipped sensors that may be nearby. CNET reports: The new app, which Apple released on the Google Play store Monday, is intended to help people look for item trackers compatible with Apple's Find My network. "If you think someone is using AirTag or another device to track your location," the app says, "you can scan to try to find it." If the Tracker Detector app finds an unexpected AirTag that's away from its owner, for example, it will be marked in the app as "Unknown AirTag." The Android app can then play a sound within 10 minutes of identifying the tracker. It may take up to 15 minutes after a tracker is separated from its owner before it shows up in the app, Apple said.

If the tracker identified is an AirTag, Apple will offer instructions within the app to remove its battery. Apple also warns within the app that if the person feels their safety is at risk because of the item tracker, they should contact law enforcement. [...] The Tracker Detect app, which Apple first discussed in June, requires users to actively scan for a device before it'll be identified. Apple doesn't require users have an Apple account in order to use the detecting app. If the AirTag is in "lost mode," anyone with an NFC-capable device can tap it and receive instructions for how to return it to its owner. Apple said all communication is encrypted so that no one, including Apple, knows the location or identity of people or their devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Apple is on the verge of yet another major milestone. The iPhone maker is close to topping a market value of more than $3 trillion -- the first publicly traded company ever to be worth that much. Shares of Apple were up about 1% in premarket trading Monday to around $181.75. The stock needs to hit $182.85 for Apple to surpass the $3 trillion mark. Apple's market value first crossed the $1 trillion threshold in August 2018 and passed $2 trillion in August 2020. [...] But before long, Apple may have some company in the $3 trillion club. Microsoft is now worth about $2.6 trillion and Google owner Alphabet's market value is right around $2 trillion. Still giant but further behind are Amazon, which has a market cap of $1.7 trillion, and Elon Musk's Tesla, worth $1 trillion.

Universal Control, a feature unveiled at Apple's WWDC event earlier this year, won't be available until spring 2022. Originally planned for a fall release, the feature aims to let users control multiple Macs and iPads with a single mouse and keyboard or trackpad. 9to5Mac reports: Now Apple has changed the launch date for Universal Control from sometime before the winter solstice to "available this spring" as updated on its website. Apple first showed off Universal Control during an on-stage demo at WWDC 21 and it ended up proving to be too ambitious to ship this year. Here's how it describes the feature: "A single keyboard and mouse or trackpad now work seamlessly between your Mac and iPad -- they'll even connect to more than one Mac or iPad. Move your cursor from your Mac to your iPad, type on your Mac and watch the words show up on your iPad, or even drag and drop content from one Mac to another." The good news is that Apple SharePlay is now available on Mac. According to Engadget, SharePlay "allows up to 32 people to enjoy the same TV shows, movies, music and livestreams and more in sync with each other on FaceTime calls." This feature was slated to arrive in the fall just like Universal Control.

Private emails show Microsoft wheeling and dealing to get into the App Store. From a report: Remember when Apple pretended like it would let cloud gaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia into the App Store, while effectively tearing their business models to shreds? Know how Microsoft replied that forcing gamers to download hundreds of individual apps to play a catalog of cloud games would be a bad experience? In reality, Microsoft was willing to play along with many of Apple's demands -- and it even offered to bring triple-A, Xbox-exclusive games to iPhone to help sweeten the deal. That's according to a new set of private emails that The Verge unearthed in the aftermath of the Epic v. Apple trial.

These games would have run on Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) platform, streaming from remote server farms filled with Xbox One and Xbox Series X processors instead of relying on the local processing power of your phone. If the deal had been made, you could have theoretically bought a copy of a game like Halo Infinite in Apple's App Store itself and launched it like any other app -- instead of having to pay $14.99 a month for an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription with a set catalog of games and then needing to use Microsoft's web-based App Store workaround. But primarily, Microsoft was negotiating to bring its Netflix-esque catalog of xCloud games to the App Store, at a time when Apple had gotten very touchy about cloud gaming in general.

The emails, between Microsoft Xbox head of business development Lori Wright and several key members of Apple's App Store teams, show that Microsoft did start with a wide array of concerns about stuffing an entire service worth of Xbox games into individual App Store apps as of February 2020. Wright mentioned the "Complexity & management of creating hundreds to thousands of apps," how they'd have to update every one of those apps to fix any bugs, and how all those app icons could lead to cluttered iOS homescreens, among other worries.

Apple will not have to implement changes to its in-app purchase system and App Store guidelines as ordered by the judge's ruling in its court battle with Epic Games. From a report: While Apple largely won that case, as the court ruled Apple was not acting as a monopolist, the company had been ordered to stop preventing app developers from adding links that pointed users to other means of paying for their in-app purchases outside the App Store. Both Apple and Epic appealed the original ruling -- Epic because it was not successful with its larger claims, and Apple because it disagreed with this aspect of the ruling over in-app purchases. Apple originally had until Dec. 9 to update its App Store policies, but had asked the court for a stay on the injunction regarding the changes to its in-app purchasing guidelines until the appeal was decided.

The appeals court has now granted Apple more time before the injunction goes into effect. That means developers will have to continue to use the existing in-app purchase system Apple provides. They won't be allowed to link to or steer users to their own websites for payments from inside their apps. In a document filed today in the U.S Court of Appels for the Ninth Circuit, the court decided Apple had demonstrated "at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court's determination that Epic Games failed to show Apple's conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California's Unfair Competition Law."

Apple has allowed app developers to collect data from its 1 billion iPhone users for targeted advertising, in an unacknowledged shift that lets companies follow a much looser interpretation of its controversial privacy policy. Financial Times: In May Apple communicated its privacy changes to the wider public, launching an advert that featured a harassed man whose daily activities were closely monitored by an ever-growing group of strangers. When his iPhone prompted him to "Ask App Not to Track," he clicked it and they vanished. Apple's message to potential customers was clear -- if you choose an iPhone, you are choosing privacy.

But seven months later, companies including Snap and Facebook have been allowed to keep sharing user-level signals from iPhones, as long as that data is anonymised and aggregated rather than tied to specific user profiles. For instance Snap has told investors that it plans to share data from its 306m users -- including those who ask Snap "not to track" -- so advertisers can gain "a more complete, real-time view" on how ad campaigns are working. Any personally identifiable data will first be obfuscated and aggregated. Similarly, Facebook operations chief Sheryl Sandberg said the social media group was engaged in a "multiyear effort" to rebuild ad infrastructure "using more aggregate or anonymised data."

These companies point out that Apple has told developers they "may not derive data from a device for the purpose of uniquely identifying it." This means they can observe "signals" from an iPhone at a group level, enabling ads that can still be tailored to "cohorts" aligning with certain behaviour but not associated with unique IDs. This type of tracking is becoming the norm.

Interviews and internal Apple documents provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the company made concessions to Beijing and won key legal exemptions. CEO Tim Cook personally lobbied officials over threats that would have hobbled its devices and services. His interventions paved the way for Apple's unparalleled success in the country. The Information: Apple's iPhone recently became the top-selling smartphone in China, its second-biggest market after the U.S., for the first time in six years. But the company owes much of that success to CEO Tim Cook, who laid the foundation years ago by secretly signing an agreement, estimated to be worth more than $275 billion, with Chinese officials promising Apple would do its part to develop China's economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals and worker training. Cook forged the five-year agreement, which hasn't been previously reported, during the first of a series of in-person visits he made to the country in 2016 to quash a sudden burst of regulatory actions against Apple's business, according to internal Apple documents viewed by The Information. Before the meetings, Apple executives were scrambling to salvage the company's relationship with Chinese officials, who believed the company wasn't contributing enough to the local economy, the documents show. Amid the government crackdown and the bad publicity that accompanied it, iPhone sales plummeted.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, Canadian police announced that car thieves have been using AirTags to track vehicles they want to steal. York Regional Police (which serves an area north of Toronto) revealed that it has investigated five incidents in the past three months in which thieves have hidden AirTags on vehicles parked in public. Later, the thieves tracked down their targets to steal the cars at their leisure.

Other Bluetooth-based trackers have been available for some time now, but the ubiquity of Apple devices (which communicate with AirTags via Apple's Find My app) means it's generally faster and more accurate to track something remotely via an AirTag than a rival device like a Tile. And while they undoubtedly make it easier for users to recover lost stuff, the tags are being exploited by criminals. Apple did build some anti-stalking functions into AirTags -- if your Apple device detects that you're being followed by an unfamiliar device, it will alert you, as long as you're running iOS 14.5 or newer.

Apple's iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, Reuters reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The hacks, which took place in the last several months, hit U.S. officials either based in Uganda or focused on matters concerning the East African country, two of the sources said. The intrusions, first reported here, represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology. Previously, a list of numbers with potential targets including some American officials surfaced in reporting on NSO, but it was not clear whether intrusions were always tried or succeeded.

Apple, suffering from a global supply crunch, is now confronting a different problem: slowing demand. From a report: The company has told its component suppliers that demand for the iPhone 13 lineup has weakened, people familiar with the matter said, signaling that some consumers have decided against trying to get the hard-to-find item. Already, Apple had cut its iPhone 13 production goal for this year by as many as 10 million units, down from a target of 90 million, because of a lack of parts, Bloomberg News reported. But the hope was to make up much of that shortfall next year -- when supply is expected to improve. The company is now informing its vendors that those orders may not materialize, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Michael Schwekutsch, a director of engineering in the Apple Special Projects Group that's reportedly working on self-driving cars, has left to join electric air taxi start-up Archer as its senior VP of engineering. Schwekutsch noted the change on his LinkedIn page on Wednesday. CNBC reports: The move is the latest example of staff turnover in Apple's secretive car project. Former VP of special projects Doug Field left in September to lead Ford's emerging technology efforts, a priority for the legacy automaker under its new Ford+ turnaround plan. The move also indicates that tech start-ups attacking climate issues can attract the most qualified engineers. A former VP of engineering at Tesla, Schwekutsch holds more than 100 patents related to vehicle design, worked on prototypes for the Tesla Plaid systems, and led production of electric drive systems for several vehicle models from Tesla, Porsche, BMW and others, according to his online resume.

Archer is working on electric-powered air taxis that take off and land vertically. Like competitors Lilium and Joby Aviation, Archer aims to transport passengers on short trips, avoiding traffic on the ground and the noise and emissions generated by traditional fuel-burning aircraft and cars. It's already developed a model known as the Maker that can carry one passenger and a pilot, and is working on a four-passenger model. The company aims to operate urban air mobility services starting in Los Angeles once its aircraft are cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration for commercial use. Founded in 2018 and based in Palo Alto, Calif., Archer went public in September after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Atlas Crest Investment Corp.

Apple is asking a higher court to halt a judge's decision that will force changes to its App Store while a legal fight with Epic Games continues. From a report: Lawyers for the company filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, seeking action by Dec. 8. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers rejected Apple's request to put on hold her ruling allowing developers to steer customers to payment methods outside the App Store, an overhaul the judge ordered in September that could cost the tech giant a few billion dollars annually. The company said at that time it would appeal to the higher court.

Apple's first AR headset will be released in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a research note from analyst Ming-chi Kuo. The Verge: Kuo predicted back in March that the headset would be released sometime next year, and is now also providing more technical information on the device. The headset will have two processors, according to Kuo, one with "the same level of computing power as M1" and one lower-end chip to handle input from the various sensors. For example, Kuo says that the headset has "at least 6-8 optical modules to simultaneously provide continuous video see-through AR services." The headset is also said to have two 4K OLED microdisplays from Sony. Kuo cites the headset's "Mac-level (PC-level) computing power," its ability to be operated untethered, and its wide range of applications as factors that will differentiate it from competitors. Various reports on the device have disagreed as to whether it will be wholly independent or rely on an iPhone or a separate processor box to stream content.

Apple Podcasts rises above bad reviews, but at what cost? From a report: You pissed off people by somewhat breaking your app, and they're leaving angry reviews. How can you salvage your reputation? Apple just found one incredibly effective way -- get listeners to submit better reviews by interrupting their podcast experience with an in-app prompt to submit a rating. That's how the Apple Podcasts app went from a publicly embarrassing 1.8-star score all the way to 4.6 stars in a little over a month without any actual fixes, as developer and App Store watchdog Kosta Eleftheriou points out. And it's still going up: according to AppFigures data, the app has been getting thousands of ratings every day since November 9th, with the vast, overwhelming majority of them issuing a 5-star score. The app has made it to 4.7 stars overall as of this writing and is firmly the No. 1 App Store search result for "podcast." It looks far more desirable to a new user than it might have before.

If you think there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, you might be right -- it could definitely be that people who bother to submit reviews tend to be angry, and a lot of people who love Apple Podcasts and never bothered to look it up in the App Store (remember, it's preinstalled!) are finally balancing things out. But do those people actually love Apple Podcasts? Because if you really look at the reviews, it seems like some funny business is going on. There are new, positive reviews, but they aren't reviews of the Apple Podcasts app at all -- they're reviews of podcasts themselves.

Apple sued the NSO Group, the Israeli surveillance company, in federal court on Tuesday, another setback for the beleaguered firm and the unregulated spyware industry. From a report: The lawsuit is the second of its kind -- Facebook sued the NSO Group in 2019 for targeting its WhatsApp users -- and represents another consequential move by a private company to curb invasive spyware by governments and the companies that provide their spy tools. Apple, for the first time, seeks to hold NSO accountable for what it says was the surveillance and targeting of Apple users. Apple also wants to permanently prevent NSO from using any Apple software, services or devices, a move that could render the company's Pegasus spyware product worthless, given that its core business is to give NSO's government clients full access to a target's iPhone or Android smartphone.

Apple is also asking for unspecified damages for the time and cost to deal with what the company argues is NSO's abuse of its products. Apple said it would donate the proceeds from those damages to organizations that expose spyware. Since NSO's founding in 2010, its executives have said that they sell spyware to governments only for lawful interception, but a series of revelations by journalists and private researchers have shown the extent to which governments have deployed NSO's Pegasus spyware against journalists, activists and dissidents. Apple executives described the lawsuit as a warning shot to NSO and other spyware makers. "This is Apple saying: If you do this, if you weaponize our software against innocent users, researchers, dissidents, activists or journalists, Apple will give you no quarter," Ivan Krstic, head of Apple security engineering and architecture, said in an interview on Monday.

Italy's antitrust watchdog has fined Apple and Amazon a total of more than 200 million euros ($225 million) for cooperating to restrict competition in the sale of Apple and Beats branded products in violation of European Union rules. From a report: An investigation found that provisions in a 2018 agreement between the U.S. tech giants limited access to Italy's Amazon marketplace to selected resellers, the Italian Competition Authority said Tuesday. The watchdog slapped Apple with a 134.5 million euro ($151.32 million) fine and Amazon with a 68.7 million euro ($77.29 million) penalty. It also ordered them to end the restrictions and give resellers access in a "non-discriminatory manner." Both Apple and Amazon said they would appeal.

"In the past, Apple has taken an opposing stance on letting consumers repair their devices. Some of that is changing with Apple's new announcement," writes Slashdot reader wakeboarder. "Apple will sell components like batteries and screens to allow consumers to repair their own devices. This will help reduce e-waste, but will also allow Apple to control the market for parts -- not exactly what right-to-repair activists have fought for."

With that said, Apple "didn't change its policy out of the goodness of its heart," writes The Verge's Maddie Stone. The timing of this announcement was "deliberate," considering Wednesday was a key deadline in the fight over a shareholder resolution environmental advocates filed with the company in September asking Apple to re-evaluate its stance on independent repair. The issue would've likely ended up at the Securities and Exchange Commission. From the report: Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy told The Verge that the program "has been in development for well over a year," describing it as "the next step in increasing customer access to Apple genuine parts, tools, and manuals." Leahy declined to say whether the timing of the announcement was influenced by shareholder pressure. Activist shareholders believe that it was. "The timing is definitely no coincidence," says Annalisa Tarizzo, an advocate with Green Century, the mutual fund company that filed the right-to-repair resolution with Apple in September. As a result of today's announcement, Green Century is withdrawing its resolution, which asked Apple to "reverse its anti repair practices" and evaluate the benefits of making parts and tools more available to consumers.

Apple's initial response to the Green Century resolution was less than conciliatory. Tarizzo says that on October 18 (30 days before the self service announcement), Apple submitted a "no action request" to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking the investor oversight body to block the proposal. According to Tarizzo, Apple's argument before the SEC was that the proposal -- that the company "prepare a report" on the environmental and social benefits of making its devices easier to fix -- ran afoul of shareholder proposal guidance by infringing on Apple's normal business operations. However, earlier this month, the SEC issued new guidance concerning no-action requests that includes a carve-out for proposals that raise "significant social policy issues." In other words, shareholders can bring resolutions that affect a company's day-to-day business operations if those proposals raise issues with significant societal impact. Tarizzo believes that this change made it much more likely the SEC would side with Green Century rather than Apple, particularly since the mutual fund company connected the dots between increased access to repair and the fight against climate change. (Using devices as long as possible through maintenance and repair is one of the best ways to reduce the climate impact of consumer technology since the majority of the emissions associated with our gadgets occur during the manufacturing stage.)

"It wasn't a guarantee that the SEC would side with us, but the new guidance indicates it's very likely we would prevail," Tarizzo says. "It effectively took away a lot of Apple's leverage in the process." Now, Apple seems to have regained some leverage by announcing its new Self Service Repair program on the same day that Green Century was required to respond to the no-action request. Instead of arguing that the SEC should allow the shareholder resolution to move forward, Green Century is now withdrawing the resolution entirely.

Apple employees will return to offices starting February 1st as part of a hybrid work pilot and will be able to work remotely for four weeks a year. From a report: First reported by The Information, employees learned of the news Thursday via an internal memo from CEO Tim Cook. The company had previously offered two weeks of remote work per year but added two more weeks to give "more opportunity to travel, be closer to your loved ones, or simply shake up your routines," Cook's memo said. The pilot will start workers at one or two days in the office, then in March, workers will come to the office to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. They'll be able to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays. Some employees may be asked to come into the office four or five days a week if their roles require more time in the office.

Apple is pushing to accelerate development of its electric car and is refocusing the project around full self-driving capabilities, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, aiming to solve a technical challenge that has bedeviled the auto industry. From the report: For the past several years, Apple's car team had explored two simultaneous paths: creating a model with limited self-driving capabilities focused on steering and acceleration -- similar to many current cars -- or a version with full self-driving ability that doesn't require human intervention. Under the effort's new leader -- Apple Watch software executive Kevin Lynch -- engineers are now concentrating on the second option. Lynch is pushing for a car with a full self-driving system in the first version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

It's just the latest shift for the car effort, known as the Special Projects Group or "Project Titan," which has endured strategy changes and executive turnover since starting around 2014. In September, the former head of the team, Doug Field, left for a job at Ford Motor after three years in charge. In picking Lynch as his replacement, Apple went with an internal executive who isn't a car veteran. In trying to master self-driving cars, Apple is chasing a holy grail within the industry. Tech and auto giants have spent years on autonomous vehicles, but the capabilities have remained elusive.

Long-time tlhIngan writes: Tim Sweeney is at it again. The CEO of Epic Games blasts Apple and Google and calls for a universal app store that works across all platforms. Naturally, he's proposing that Epic Games manage the store across iOS, Android, Xbox, PC, Nintendo and Sony. Bloomberg (paywalled) has more details. "What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms," said Sweeney in an interview at the Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness in Seoul, South Korea. "Right now software ownership is fragmented between the iOS App Store, the Android Google Play marketplace, different stores on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and then Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store." Sweeney added that Epic Games is working with developers and service providers to create a system to allow users "to buy software in one place, knowing that they'd have it on all devices and all platforms."

"There's a store market, there's a payments market, and there are many other related markets. And it's critical that antitrust enforcement not allow a monopolist in one market to use their control of that market to impose control over unrelated markets." He went on to accuse Apple of complying "with oppressive foreign laws" while "ignoring laws passed by Korea's democracy." "Apple must be stopped," he says.